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Friday, September 9, 2011

The Arab Spring Is Al-Qaeda’s Winter

By Omar Ashour

Al-Qaeda’s
operating environment today is vastly different from the one in which it
launched its most notorious operation, the 9/11 terror attacks. Osama bin
Laden, Al-Qaeda’s founder and charismatic leader, was killed by United States
Navy Seals in Pakistan in May. Three brutal Middle East dictatorships were
removed this year – two by unarmed civil-resistance tactics and one by a
NATO-assisted armed rebellion. Drone attacks have eliminated many of Al-Qaeda’s
most experienced commanders, including, most recently, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.

Has
militant jihadism failed, placing Al-Qaeda’s survival in doubt?

Jihadism
is a modern revolutionary ideology which holds that political violence is a
theologically legitimate and tactically efficient way to effect socio-political
change. Terrorism dominated the armed activities of many of the groups that
subscribe to this worldview.

But,
while Al-Qaeda maintained its ideology after 9/11, its organization changed
dramatically. From a centralized, hierarchical organization, it became a highly
decentralized structure, with regional branches as the dominant actors.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula emerged in late 2002 as a force in Saudi
Arabia, orchestrating a spectacular attack in Riyadh in 2003. This was followed
by the advent of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004. By 2007, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb had appeared as well.

The
“franchise model” had fully taken hold. Ten years after 9/11, however, these
franchises are in check, rather than expansion.

Parallel
to the “franchise” model, Al-Qaeda also has adopted a “spider-web” approach
that eschews organization in favor of trained operatives who form small cells
to conduct specific attacks and then disband.

Then
there is the “ideological front” model, initially advocated by a famous
jihadist strategist, Abu Musab al-Suri. The premise here, as with the
spider-web approach, is that the most secure way to organize is without an
organization. “This defeats any security arrangement,” Abu Musab al-Suri wrote
in a 1,600-page paramilitary manual, “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance.”

The
model works by propagating a narrative describing the severe injustices and
humiliation suffered by Muslims, advancing an ideology that identifies the
means to remove the grievances, and then letting sympathizers recruit
themselves to Al-Qaeda or initiate their own operations. This was the model followed
in the case of U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 fellow soldiers at
Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, and by Roshonara Choudhary, who stabbed the British
parliamentarian Stephen Timms in 2010.

Not
only has Al-Qaeda mutated structurally, but its ideology is constantly open to
challenge by the most unlikely suspects. After 9/11, several movements,
factions, leading jihadists, and individual militants were highly critical of
Al-Qaeda’s behavior, and began to move toward nonviolence, depriving Al-Qaeda
of tens of thousands of supporters. This led to the transformation of entire
organizations in Egypt, Libya, and Algeria, and of a significant number of
individual militants in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia and other countries.

In
Egypt, Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group), a former Al-Qaeda ally that
cooperated in the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, has
abandoned and delegitimized political violence. Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, which
led an insurgency in Upper Egypt from 1992 to 1997 and was implicated in the
1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, started disavowing armed tactics
in 1997, and consolidated this change by releasing some 25 volumes of
theological and rational arguments to promote their new ideology.

After
President Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power in Egypt earlier this year, Al-Gamaa
al-Islamiyya, rather than stockpiling weapons and rebuilding its armed wing,
held internal elections. It asked its members to fill out party registration
forms, organized rallies against sectarian violence, issued joint statements
with the Coptic Orthodox Church of Asyut in support of peaceful coexistence,
and founded a political party (Construction and Development) to stand in
elections.

The
Egyptian Al-Jihad Organization, which produced Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s
current paramount leader, also initiated a partly successful transformation
process. Several of its factions still uphold armed tactics, including
terrorism. Others are highly critical of Al-Qaeda, and are attempting to form
conventional political parties in Egypt.

The
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, another former Al-Qaeda ally, abandoned the
ideology between 2005 and 2010 and joined the revolution against Colonel
Moammar Gadhafi’s dictatorship. The LIFG leader, Abd al-Hakim Belhaj (alias Abu
Abdullah al-Sadiq) currently is the commander of the Military Council of
Tripoli, and spearheaded the attack on Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound.

After
emerging victorious, Belhaj called for enhancing security, protecting property,
ending vendettas, and building a new Libya. The moderate tone was generally
consistent with what most of the LIFG leaders have been saying in the last six
months, whether in eastern or western Libya. Overall, the Arab Spring delivered
a heavy blow to jihadism and significantly undermined its rationale (that armed
militancy is the most effective and most legitimate tool for change).

Indeed,
the combined effect of intelligence operations, drone attacks, transformations
within jihadist ranks, and the Arab Spring has thwarted the power of “Al-Qaeda
Central.” The franchises and rejigged ideology mean that some fragments of
Al-Qaeda will probably survive, because they are embedded more deeply within
particular localities. But Al-Qaeda as a global threat has been severely
undermined.

-This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 09/09/2011
-Omar Ashour is director of Middle East Graduate Studies at the Institute of
Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter (United Kingdom), and a visiting
fellow at the Brookings Doha Center

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...